Easier DND Prep and Planning Through the CASE Framework

How to Be a Better DM: Dungeon Master Tips for the DM Newbie, the Hobbyist and the Forever DM

Abridged Show Notes

Feeling overwhelmed by D&D campaign planning? Struggle to connect your grand ideas into a single, captivating story? This episode unveils the CASE Framework, a simple yet powerful system that will transform your planning sessions. Learn how to craft unforgettable campaigns, memorable story arcs, and engaging encounters that will leave your players begging for more. Listen in and unleash the true potential of your D&D world!

Planning Your D&D Campaign with the CASE Framework

This episode dives into the CASE Framework, a system for planning D&D campaigns of any size.

The CASE Framework stands for:

• Campaign: The overall plot of your entire campaign.
• Arc: Story Arcs within the campaign, like modules you might run from a book.
• Session: Individual sessions that make up your story arcs.
• Encounter: Specific challenges or interactions within a session (combat, puzzles, social encounters, etc.)

The framework helps you brainstorm and organize your ideas, ensuring everything ties together into a cohesive story.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Why is planning sometimes the hardest part of being a dungeon master? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of guide to help you through your planning, no matter what you are planning for? On today’s episode, I’m going to introduce you to the CASE framework. Through it, you can take any aspect of the entire campaign and work on it without having to worry about writer’s block. This framework will help new Dungeon Masters the most, though old DMs will likely benefit from using it as well.

The CASE Framework is incredibly simple, but often, it’s the simple things in life that save us time, energy and money.

This is How to Be a Better DM, brought to you by Session 0 Studios, and I’m your host Justin Lewis. Our show has been helping dungeon masters new and old for over 150 episodes now and today we are going to help you tell better stories for yourself and your friends as you play D&D.

Want to start out the show today with a few words of gratitude. Over the last couple of months, the show has grown, we’ve launched our new Actual Play show, we’ve done a panel at our first live event, and we’ve just been blown away by the support you’ve given us.

Now enough sappiness. Let’s talk about the CASE Framework.

Why the CASE Framework

The CASE Framework will help you break down each individual part into smaller constituent parts. It will also help you make sense of the smaller parts by fitting them into the larger framework.

One of the most important parts of the story is the throughline. It’s not a story unless all of the events are connected. If they weren’t, they’re just random events, not necessarily one story. Having the same character throughout each event isn’t enough. They need to tie together somehow. You can have “side quests” but the campaign should feel like a campaign.

The nice thing about the CASE Framework is that you can really start your planning with any part of the framework. It helps to remember the framework as a whole so that as you do plan the S for example, you keep in mind the A and the E and to a lesser extent the C.

Let me also explain that this framework doesn’t touch improv during your game. This is all about the prep so any improv you do will have to use some of our other tips.

One last thing that is nice about this framework is that it can help you plan the timing of your game. Despite how much we may not want them to, all things come to an end. That’s a good thing, because the longer something goes on, the higher the chance there is that it spoils. Every story has a climax then a wrap-up and a close. D&D is no different. Knowing the climax and the end from the beginning can help make sure the campaign doesn’t get stale. If it’s boring, it’s time to move on.

Now let’s get into the framework.

The framework goes as follows

Campaign

Arc (as in Story Arc)

Session

Encounter

Campaign

C stands for Campaign. As I mentioned at the start of today’s episode, each part of the framework is tied to the parts before and after. The C and E are a little bit different because obviously they are only tied to one other part.

In this step, you think about the main plot line of the campaign. The CASE framework works so well because you can start with any part of it, whatever is easiest for you to get going.

You also need to think about the scope of what you are planning. If you want to run a full campaign then you need to do the C. If you only want to run a small Campaign, or a Story Arc then you just need the ASE. Lastly, if you want to do a one-shot, then you just need the SE.

A campaign is generally made up of at least a few story arcs.

For the purpose of the CASE Framework, when you work on the C you’re going to work on it in 3 parts.

1. The General Idea (You’ll get used to doing this)
2. Break the Idea into Steps (Story Arcs)
3. Develop the Important Players

Let’s go through each of these.

When planning a campaign and you decide to start on the C of CASE, the easiest way to start is with the general idea of the campaign.

In my case, this is where I toy with multiple ideas to settle on the one that I actually want to pursue. For example, I’m starting to plan the next homebrew campaign for my friends.

If any of you are listening, stop listening right now. Also for the rest of you, this will likely give away some spoilers for any one-shots that I put on for you in the future, so keep that in mind.

I’m planning on putting the next campaign I run in my homebrew world of Integrity. I’ve talked a lot about this world, but it’s constantly changing.

So as of right now, I’ve got a few main plot lines bouncing around in my head, for example

• Humans are dying off because their connection to an Elder Diety is gone, so now there is an organization called the Unseen that is trying to reverse that but they are going about it in the very worst ways
• The world itself is in chaos and every nation is poised for all out war. Basically the world is on the brink of world war. There is also a secret organization called The Breach that is led by a man who wants to bring peace to the world. To do this, he is trying to conquer the world. He believes that either he will succeed and conquer everything, uniting the world under himself, or the rest of the world will unite against him. Either way, he believes the world will be united.
• Originally, on this world, the Elder Diety was threatened by the falling of a corrupted seed from the Worlds Tree (Yggrdasil). That seed fell into the world and started corrupting the lesser gods, turning many of them to be evil. That seed is still in the world, and whatever protection the elder god used to keep the corruption at bay is no longer working, and now the corruption is not just moral but it’s also physical.

I have more ideas but you get the idea. I’ve been working on these major plotlines for a while. They all seem very interesting to me, but I don’t want to create a campaign that lasts forever.

So what will likely happen is that I will pick maybe one or two of these major plot points and set them into motion, meanwhile, I might pick one or two of the plot lines I didn’t choose and use them as minor story arcs. Either way, putting the ideas on paper like this helps me to realize what I want to do with my campaign.

I know a lot of people love to wing it, and that’s totally fine, but you don’t get the amazing callbacks or foreshadowing that you may find in well-thought-out novels if you do that. Having a strategy is never a bad thing.

It’s also the opportune moment to think of the theme for your campaign. Some people don’t care to put themes in the campaign, but I think it can leave a nice little easter egg for your players if they are paying attention (and if you do it right).

The theme should help flavor and govern everything you do to a very small extent. For most part, about 20% of what you do should be overtly theme related and the other 80% should be subtly theme related.

Let’s talk about an example just to hammer down this point.

One theme that I’ve been thinking about that may or may not connect with any of the previous plot lines I mentioned is the idea of change.

I might not be able to articulate it well, but what is mean is the involuntary change that happens throughout the course of life. It’s that feeling you get when you look back over a year, two or three and realize that without even trying to, you have changed and become something different, for better or for worse.

I’ve thought that it might be cool to create some enemies, or big bosses that can literally corrupt, even from the viewpoint of turning humans into monstrous creatures. Perhaps, summed up, the theme would be metamorphosis. I think it might be cool to play with that.

For most of the campaign I would probably try to make it so NPCs react to the PCs differently after some time to highlight the changes. For the overt 20% that is highly tied to the theme, I would probably have some sort of traumatic event happen to one of the PCs that could possibly force them to multiclass or physically change them somehow.

But that’s enough about the campaign at large. Let’s dive into story arcs.

Arc

The Story Arcs could be considered a campaign within a campaign. Often the modules you can run from books could be considered either Campaigns or Story Arcs, depending on how long the module is or how long the DM strings it out to be.

Just like most stories, the story arc has a beginning a middle and end. One of the major differences between the story arc and the Campaign is that the Campaign plot line might be interrupted by a non-salient story arc while the story arc might be interrupted by a non-salient session or two.

Let explain what I mean.

In a campaign, let’s the say the main plot line is to have the party fight the Dragon Queen.

As a DM you are well within your rights to introduce a story arc that follows the desire of one of the PCs to acquire an ancient Ancestor Blade. In this story arc, the party fights not dragons, but giants and the entire feel is off. The party would understand that this isn’t the main plot line and when they are done they will get back to what is more pressing.

Now in the Story Arc where the party decides to look for the ancestor blade, there might be a few sessions where they decide to just go shopping, which doesn’t necessarily move them towards their goals. They might want extra gold for the shopping, so they could theoretically take a job in the local town of clearing out a nearby band of gnolls. That would take a couple sessions and would not be connected to the giants or the dragons in any way.

Does that make sense?

When it comes to story arcs, the theme and purpose can be much more specific than the campaign. In my previous examples, my campaign plot lines were focused on the world as a whole. The themes had to do with personal change, unwanted or otherwise.

Within this campaign, I’ve been thinking of toying around with some story arcs that would fit within it, for example:

• A story arc that involves the party getting shipwrecked.
• A story arc to introduce the Breach, the worldwide domination organization
• A story arc to walk my party through Spark, a very unstable and powerful magical drug that one of the countries actually uses for technology

And these aren’t even touching any of the story arcs my players will introduce just by having compelling backstories.

Just like campaigns, story arcs need adventure hooks. The best part about a story arc is that the adventure hook and how your players react to it determines whether the story arc will pan out and become part of the campaign. If you drop the hook, but your party doesn’t grab onto it then you don’t really need to worry about that particular story arc.

If the hook is related to an important plot point for the campaign, then tough luck. I hate to tell you this, but unless you want to railroad your party then they can choose what to pursue or what not to pursue.

That said, there is nothing wrong with making consequences happen from choices the party makes or doesn’t make.

Let’s say you drop the hook that there is a kingdom nearby where the king has been curse and is suddenly an undead lich. Let’s also say they don’t investigate that hook.

They can’t get mad at you when the Lich’s kingdom suddenly attacks one of the neighboring kingdoms, a kingdom the party is in, with an undead horde. You as the DM introduced a problem and they let the problem simmer and grow. The problem still exists despite the party’s lack of interest in the problem.

Some story arcs will go the way of the dinosaurs though and won’t even exist if the party doesn’t investigate them. That’s ok. Let it happen. You have so many other fun and interesting ideas anyways.

Session

After the Story Arc comes the Session. These are the daily building blocks of your story arc and campaign. Without the session, nothing happens.

Just like with the Arc and the Campaign, you want to think about the purpose and goal of your session.

I think it’s good to remind you about the PUT A CLUE framework that I introduced back around episode 151.

P stands for Purpose

U stands for Unfinished Business

T stands for Timeline

A stands for Arcs and Acts

C stands for characters

L stands for location

U stands for the Unexpected

E stands for encounters.

I won’t go into the full framework, but I do want to touch on a few parts.

First of all, like I said, you want to think about the purpose and goal of the session. This is so very very important because it sets the tone for everything else you do as far as session prep is concerned. You need to think about the feeling and mindset you want your party members to be in at the end of the session. You can even think about what they were feeling at the end of last session to help bring it all together.

Let me also point out that the A and E are relevant to what we are talking about today.

The A stands for Arcs and Acts, forcing you to think about how the session fits into the story arc as a whole. The E stands for encounters, making you think about the encounters that will make up your session.

The CASE framework works on the idea that each component makes up the larger part that it fits into. Your sessions make up your story arcs and your encounters make up your sessions.

You can use this to plan the timing and the continuity of each part.

One last note about sessions is to remember to give yourself some breathing room. Plan too much but relax and let what happens happen. No need to worry about every single little detail, though you can spend a lot of time in preparation.

Encounter

Finally, we get down to the Encounter level. Just like with every other step, you want to think about the purpose of each individual encounter.

As a basic rule of thumb, each session could have 3-5 encounters, although you could have more or less depending on the session.

When you build out the encounter you want to remember what you want to accomplish with this particular encounter. Sometimes the purpose could be as simple as giving the party a challenge. I think the best encounters are ones where the purpose is not so obvious. For example, one purpose might be to make the party feel endangered, or maybe one encounter’s purpose is to hint at a plot secret.

Intrinsically connected to the purpose will be the type of encounter it is. For example, a puzzle encounter might have a difficult job of making the party feel in danger, if there are no combat or trap elements. Similarly, a combat encounter will have a hard time hinting out a major plot point if there is no social element involved or if it is a straightforward combat encounter. So think about what type of encounter you want it to be.

For those of you who use random table generators, I would also encourage you to think outside the box in every single encounter. Don’t let an encounter slip by without adding in something cool and memorable. Let’s say that you roll on a random table and now the party is fighting a group of 3 bugbears. It should be a simple encounter, because your party is a much higher level than the bugbears after all. So what if the three bugbears resembled the Three Stooges? This combat encounter would quickly turn into something else that is much more memorable and hopefully enjoyable. You can make every encounter just that much more special if you so choose.

How to Use the CASE Framework

Now let’s come to the most practical part of today’s show.

How do you use the CASE Framework?

If you remember, the CASE framework is supposed to help you prepare any individual part of your D&D experience.

You use this framework quite simply.

Step 1: Choose the portion you wish to work on.

If you are not in a current campaign, then the most logical step is to work on creating the campaign. If you are in the middle of a campaign, then you need to choose between working on the next Story Arc, Session or Encounter.

Step 2: Review the larger portions around the part you want to work on. If you are working on the Story Arc, then you need to review the Campaign work that you’ve already done. Think about the major themes of the campaign and the things that you want to accomplish.

Step 3: Split what you are working on into its smaller parts. So if you are working on the Story Arc, you can logically split it into groupings of sessions.

Step 4: Fill in the Details. Everything to this point has gotten you the bare bones. What’s left is to just fill them in.

The CASE Framework doesn’t help you do all of the work. Instead, it orients you and gets you started in the right direction with the right scope. It’s really more of a compass and a map. It points you towards what you should do and helps remind you of what you have done.

End

D&D can be a complicated thing. Sometimes as DMs we overcomplicate. I am 100% at fault there. The real magic happens when you can simplify a great story. If it’s simple, yet gripping, then there’s no way for you to mess it up.

The CASE Framework is an attempt to help simplify and demystify the entire Planning process. It doesn’t give you the exact details of every moment, but rather it helps you tie it all together. It helps you create 1 story, rather than a series of random and unconnected episodes. If that’s what you were going for, then that’s totally ok. For those of us who want to create something more integrated, this should help.

Remember

Campaign

Arc

Session

Encounter.

If you ever need to improvise anything, just remember to think about the entire framework when you do.

With this framework, I believe you’ll plan your entire game in a much more calm and collected way.

I...